Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, center on drums, with Stephen Colbert, right, and Ozzy Osbourne at the Rally to Restore Sanity.

Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, the drummer and bandleader for the hip-hop group the Roots, had a pretty good view of the crowd at this weekend’s Jon Stewart-led “Rally to Restore Sanity.” The Roots were one of the featured musical acts at the show. As is usual with such rallies, there’s been plenty of debate about how many people actually attended the event. Thompson puts the number at 200,000. Speakeasy asked Thompson to explain how he came upon that figure.

Thompson, who has played venues small and large around the world with the Roots, has seen a wide variety of audience sizes. In a text message, he calls his figure “an educated guess.”

“It was definitely more than 150K,” Thompson says.

Thompson says he played a concert on the National Mall for Earth Day on April 25 and that crowd was estimated by some at around 150,000 people. He says the crowd from the Stewart rally was noticeably larger. To arrive at his figure, he used the Washington Monument as a point of reference. “This was beyond the monument,” Thompson said about the crowd at the Stewart rally.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.